The Leap is the adventurous member of the Kurnell trio and one of Sydney's best-loved shore dives. The name is literal: from the rock platform below the small clifftop car park you giant-stride into deep water, swim out and drop straight onto a reef that steps down through 10 m and, for those who head east, over a small wall and then a large one onto sand at 21–22 m, with overhangs along the face between 22 and 16 m. From there the incoming tide carries you west, the bottom shallowing gradually through some of the finest sponge gardens on the coast – sea fans, ascidians, tube worms, and nudibranchs such as Hypselodoris bennetti, Doris chrysoderma and Ceratosoma amoenum on the rocks – past small sand bays and boulder groups at 12 m until you rise through 10 m to surface off The Steps.

The sand edge is prime seadragon habitat, with ten to twenty sightings typical and pregnant males and juveniles in late winter and spring, and the reef is reliable for seahorses and pygmy pipehorses as well as stingrays, flathead, leatherjackets, bream, moray eels and cuttlefish. The dive is committing: once you have leapt there is no exit until The Steps, so it is only done on a flood tide entered at least 90 minutes before high, and the Steps exit becomes dangerous in north-easterly swell above about a metre or at high tide with any sea running. In southerly weather, by contrast, it is almost always diveable, which is why it is such a fixture of Sydney's winter diving.

Previous rescues here have all involved misjudged exits rather than anything underwater. McFadyen's verdict is that it is only for experienced divers, and every Sydney operator runs it as a guided drift for exactly that reason. Done right it is fifty minutes of effortless drifting over the richest reef in Botany Bay, finishing where the seadragons live.

Inside Kamay Botany Bay National Park at Kurnell, continue past the Inscription Point car park to the small upper car park on the cliff edge signed The Leap (a second parking area halfway down the hill sits near the exit stairs). Gear up, take the aluminium stairs and track down to the rock platform and enter with a giant stride into deep water – the 'leap' – then swim 20–30 m out and descend. Drift west/north-west with the flood and exit at The Steps stairs or the inlet just west of them, then walk 400 m back up to the car.

Enter at least 90 minutes before high tide.

A flood-tide drift: enter at least 90 minutes before high tide so the current carries you west to The Steps; never on the ebb. Excellent in southerly winds and swell – even in very large southerly/south-easterly seas it is usually diveable – but avoid north-to-east swell over 1–1.5 m; if the Captain Cook wave buoy reads above about 0.8 m the exit at The Steps will be dangerous, and high tide makes that exit worse. Visibility averages about 6 m, is still diveable at 3 m and occasionally reaches 15–20 m.

The 2007 rescue that took two and a half hours, and a 2026 incident in which a diver abandoned gear on the rocks, both involved marginal exit conditions. Gates lock at night.

Leap in, swim 20–30 m out and descend to 10 m; standard route heads north-east to the sand edge and follows the reef edge north/west with the flood. Experienced divers go east, dropping a small wall at 4 minutes and a large wall at 6 minutes onto sand at 22 m with overhangs from 22 to 16 m, then shallow gradually westward through sponge gardens, sand bays and boulders at 12 m to surface in 10 m off The Steps. Deploy an SMB before ascending.

Abyss Scuba Diving, Pro Dive Cronulla and Coogee, Sydney Dive Academy and Frog Dive run guided Leap drifts on suitable tides most weekends; experienced independents in numbers.